Students and families in the region are shunning the heat and getting out of the kitchen... all the way to the takeaway

A new survey has revealed that students in the north west eat five takeawaysand ready meals a week, shelling out almost £25 a week on processed food - more than £1,270 every year!

A new survey has revealed the extent of our love affair with the takeaway

According to the survey, a lack of time is the main reason students give for staying out of the kitchen, with an enormous 82 per cent of respondents saying cooking from scratch simply takes too long.

Meanwhile, 56 per cent of students say they buy food to snack on, such as crisps and chocolate, instead of preparing something healthy. Lack of confidence in the kitchen plays a big role too, as 18 per cent admit to not knowing how to cook fish.

North west families are munching their way through the takeaways too, with the survey revealing that 26 per cent of families say they opt for ready meals as it’s quicker and easier than cooking a meal themselves.

To help conquer our lack of culinary confidence, TV chef Rachel Green has created a series of recipes that demonstrate just how easy it is to cook a healthy meal using fresh and frozen produce. Often overlooked in favour of another meat or plant based protein, seafood is hugely beneficial to a healthy diet with unrivalled levels of omega 3 fatty acids, vitamins and minerals. So much so, the NHS recommends eating at least two portions of fish a week. This piece of research, commissioned by the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute, confirmed that in fact 89 per cent of students in the UK don’t eat the recommended amount of fish, alongside 86 per cent of adults surveyed.

“It’s not unknown that the problem of obesity is continuously on the rise. We really need to be looking closely at our eating habits to understand where changes can be made,” said Rachel.

“Takeaways and processed ready meals are considerably higher in fat, salt and sugar than freshly prepared food and a diet that consists mainly of them will naturally propel the issue. There’s a real misconception that cooking from scratch takes a lot of time, energy and creativity. In actual fact, if you keep things simple you can easily make a dish in as little as 15 minutes, which is much quicker than most takeaway delivery services and more importantly, more nutritious.”